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Many veterinarians in Canada are facing extreme burnout and declining mental health
(www.winnipegfreepress.com)
To the people going "everyone is," I'm thinking you may not know a veterinarian.
We have a rural vet, so she's mostly a 1-person operation (she has a vet tech). She gets calls at all hours, from people she doesn't know, who are desperate, rude, or both. She was telling me about a woman who called about her puppy who was struggling to breathe. It was an hour drive away, and from experience she knew she needed to be up front that there was going to be a fee for her coming out. After being told what a shitty person she was, the woman just hung up. So, there was a puppy out there, struggling to breath, and either the vet needed to drive two hours on her weekend to help it, and possibly not get paid, or quite likely this dog dies some slow painful death.
People seem to think they're entitled to a vet, and when she can't see someone as soon as they'd like they get angry. When it's time to pay, people can get angry. There was an accident by our town and the fire department brought in two dogs that were thrown from the car and in bad shape. She had tried to make them as comfortable as possible while trying to contact someone from the family. She ended up doing a bit of work, but when the wife of the driver was finally found she simply refused to pay anything. Said she didn't ok any of it.
So consider that a vet goes into this profession because they love animals, but day in and out they're seeing them suffer terribly, and often much more than is necessary because people are ass holes. From beyond our own vet I've also heard lots of stories of people just ghosting after they've learned how much some treatment will cost, or wanting to put down animals that are just "too old." Vets sit at this intersection between helpless animals and how society treats animals. Well, and now how people treat people.
